Founded in 1961, Ozark Motor
Lines has terminals in Lebanon,
Tenn., Maysville, Ky., Springfield,
Mo., and Lenoir, N.C. The company
provides transport to 48 states and
the District of Columbia. Further
information about the company is
available at www.ozark.com.

New manager at Boston Steel

Boston Steel, a division of Tremcar
USA, has named Alex Laforest
technical sales manager for the New
England region. Laforest has been
employed at Tremcar Inc. since 2012.

“He is very knowledgeable of the
tank industry. In the past he has
worked on several different projects
for Tremcar, notably the U.S. patent
for Tremcar’s total ground level
operated tank-trailer innovation,” the
company said in a press release.

LaForest was recruited to work
directly with David and Ron Burke,
former owners of Boston Steel.

“The Burkes, still very active in the
company, are happy to train the next
generation and perpetuate the Boston
Steel tradition. We strongly believe
intergenerational pairing is profitable
for the transfer of the knowledge and
experience. Everyone is dedicated
to maintaining the Boston Steel
culture customers are used to while
optimizing production and delivery,”
the company said.

Laforest can be reached by e-mail
at laforesta@tremcar.com or by phone
at 978-989-3450.

immense sets of real-time data points
and learn from patterns their software
detects. There’s also the threat
of competitors such as Uber and

Amazon disrupting the industry.

Trucking’s digital transformation
accelerated in the past year or so with
the long-awaited roll out of electronic
logging devices, which keep track
of how long drivers are behind the
wheel. Federal law limits them to
11 hours without a break.

Echo has been working on a last-mile problem of sorts. Waggoner
estimates that 90 percent of U.S.
truck drivers work for companies
with 10 trucks or less.

“Most run their businesses on
a whiteboard. It wasn’t possible to
integrate with them before,” he said.

Now he’s bringing them into the
digital equation via web and mobile
technology.

Building new technology takes
talent. Tech workers are in high
demand across the board, so Echo
and others are going to have to dig
deeper to land them.

“Finding (the highest-level)engineers has gotten a lot harder,”said Jett McCandless, chief executiveof Project 44, who figures he’ll hire atleast 20 in the next 18 months. “It’s aconstraint to building all the productscustomers want.”He estimates such seniorengineers now are making $200,000to $220,000 a year in salary andbonus, while the price of experiencedsoftware developers and engineershas risen to $185,000 to $200,000, onaverage, from $150,000 to $160,000 inthe past year. That’s more than fivetimes the U.S. average increase forall types of workers.

Echo is loading up on software
engineers, as well as data
scientists, recruiting heavily
from universities. It hired 18 tech
employees last month.

“We started down this path a couple
of years ago,” Waggoner said of the
company’s tech upgrade.

Fortunately for Waggoner, Echo
is on a roll. Its stock price is up 58
percent in the past year to about $30
per share, compared with 38 percent
for Oak Brook-based Hub Group
and 34 percent for C.H. Robinson
Worldwide of Eden Prairie, Minn.,
which is moving 1,000 employees to
a new office on the western edge of
Lincoln Park. Echo’s stock is trading
at more than double its 52-week low of
$13.45 set Aug. 24.

(High tech trucking continued from page 19)

Echo’s first-quarter revenue
rose 39 percent to $577.1 million
on higher shipping rates and the
integration of Skokie-based Command
Transportation, which it acquired in
2015. Operating profit, which slumped
in 2016, is again on the rise.

For now, Echo is in the driver’s
seat. It just has to convince would-be
employees to come along for the ride.

(This article was first published in
Crain’s Chicago Business)

Kenan merges two subsidiaries

The Kenan Advantage Group
Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, said it
has merged its two merchant gas
subsidiaries -- Jack B. Kelley LLC and
Cryogenic Transportation LLC – into
KAG Merchant Gas Group
(KAG Merchant Gas).

KAG is North America’s largest
tank-truck transporter and logistics
provider, delivering fuels, chemicals,
merchant gases and food products
across the U.S., Canada and into
Mexico, the company said.

“By merging the two subsidiariesinto one company, we furtherstrengthened our services to ourcustomers,” said Vern Ingham,executive vice president of KAGMerchant Gas. “It allows us tostreamline our operations, bettercapitalize on our extensive U.S.footprint, capture best practices of bothorganizations and, most important,provide our customers with one point ofKAG Merchant Gas is the largesttransporter of merchant gases inthe country, the company said It hasa professional driver base of morethan 400 drivers operating a fleet ofabout 350 trucks and 500 specializedtrailers at 25 terminals across the U.S.The company hauls products such asnitrogen, oxygen, argon, LNG, CO2,ethylene, hydrogen, and helium.

“Based on our size andgeographical presence, we are able tobetter utilize our professional driversand our fleet, which are so importantin today’s transportation industry thatis experiencing the effects of a drivershortage,” Ingham said. “We arealso in the process of implementingnumerous driver programs acrossthe organization to help us retain thequality drivers we have today whilealso attracting additional drivers.Some of these include an expeditedtruck replacement program, improvedscheduling and dispatch platforms,The Kenan Advantage GroupInc. ( www.thekag.com) operatesthrough its five groups branded asFuels Delivery, Specialty Products(chemicals and liquid food), MerchantGas, KAG Canada and KAG Logistics.The company has terminal andsatellite locations in 40 states and fiveCanadian provinces and territories,with the ability to deliver within all 48contiguous states, Canada and Mexico.

Further information may be
obtained by contacting Patricia
Harcourt at 1-800-969-5419.

Ozark Motor Lines raisesdriver pay

Ozark Motor Lines Inc., a family-owned ground transportation services
company based in Memphis, Tenn., has
announced a new pay increase for its
long haul and regional truck drivers as
well as driving teams.

“It’s always great to be able to raisepay for our hard-working professionaldrivers,” said Patrick Landreth, vicepresident of human resources andsafety. “These truck drivers have suchan important job, Ozark makes it apriority to reward them for it.”Effective in June, experiencedover-the-road and regional drivers willreceive a 2 cents per mile increasewhile driving teams will receive anadditional 1 cent per mile. Also, OzarkMotor Lines is rolling out its first-everdriver per diem program to benefitdrivers in response to tax law changesthat went into effect earlier this year.

In addition to the pay package, Ozark
has a flexible home-time program that
gives drivers 48 hours of home time after
spending 10 days on the road. Drivers
can opt to stay out longer in exchange
for extended home-time hours. Other
benefits include 401k plan, sign-on
bonus, no loading or unloading, and no
Canadian or New York City routes.

Ozark Motor Lines makes insurance
benefits available to new drivers from
date of hire. This includes Teladoc
access to physicians, dental, vision,
life and disability insurance options.
Cancer and minimal essential coverage
insurance options are also available one
month after the driver’s hire date.

To drive for Ozark Motor Lines,
applicants must have at least three
months of recent over-the-road (OTR)
experience, a valid commercial
driver’s license and be at least 21 years
old. Current driving opportunities at